My boy Joe, 21 months, and I have a morning routine. We take older brother
Bud to school or camp, stop by the coffee shop for a roll and a schmooze
with our regular pals, then head home, where Joe has a bottle and plays,
mostly by himself, in the basement while I catch up with the Internet
news on my computer.

Joe's at the age where he gets into everything. We've been through it
before, so we do not hesitate to say "No!" and "Don't touch!"
in emphatic voices. Gradually, it works.

The other day, however, I dashed upstairs to go to the bathroom, putting
everything (as I thought) out of reach. Ordinarily Joe cries when I leave
him. This time it was quiet. Too quiet. When I came back, I found him
sitting in my swivel chair in front of the computer screen, with my pipe
in one hand, my pipe tool in the other (he was digging the ash out of
the bowl), and my tobacco pouch on his lap. He looked like he was just
about to light up and log onto Free Republic.

Ahem. Then yesterday, I found Joe in my rocking chair upstairs, with
a copy of Tom Clancy's Executive Orders on his lap, paging thoughtfully
through the fat volume.

Joe doesn't imitate only me. His big brother, a dog enthusiast, had a
library book he loved, a big-format text called The Encyclopedia of
the Dog. Bud reads it religiously, generally sitting in the leather
chair where he likes to roost while he reads or watches TV. While we had
that book out of the library, we found Joe in Bud's chair with the dog
book open on his lap, turning the pages carefully - with a pair of Bud's
shorts on his head.

Last month, we watched the U.S. Open on TV. Joe looked closely at the
golfers on television, then suddenly said, "Bee-ball! Bee-ball!"
as a shot flew through the air. (This is how he says "The ball."
"The dog" is "Dee-dog.") He had realized what the
game is all about.

Next day, out in the yard, Joe found the skinniest of our several plastic
baseball bats and started taking swings at balls on the ground. "Dolf!

Dolf!" he exclaimed.

As children grow older, they begin to imitate with greater sophistication
- often with highly undesirable results. Bud's first TV exposure included
some old Warner Brothers cartoons. Trust me, you do not want your child
to start talking like Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck, a kind of 1950s Brooklyn
wiseguy.

Bud spent his first five years in Boston. When he was three, we bought
the Phonics Game. One day, I was sounding out a word with him: "Duh-ah-guh,"
I said, pointing to the letters on the card: D-O-G.

"What's a dahg?" Bud asked.

"What's a dog?" I responded, in some astonishment. "Oh,
dough-wug," he exclaimed, employing the proletarian Boston diphthong.

Some kinds of imitation - or is it inheritance? - do not bear close contemplation.
Where does Bud's habit come from of racing through his homework without
reading the instructions - generally getting everything right, but (as
we know) cruising for a crash somewhere down the line? How about his habit
of making anxious plans days ahead? "What are we going to do Saturday
afternoon?" he'll demand - on Wednesday at the breakfast table.

How about his utter unconsciousness of the things that pass through his
hands? Just this morning, I had to take him to camp wearing one old shoe
and one new shoe. Where's the other new shoe? "I dunno."

What about his staying up till all hours reading books? Gulping down
his dinner in three minutes and then wondering what's for dessert?